Zenkaikon

My wife and I went to an anime convention in King of Prussia this past weekend. I've been to many game conventions before, and we've gone to science fiction conventions together before, but this was something different. There was a similarity in the nature of fandom, each with their own set of references. The biggest differences were in age and the amount of costuming. We were among the oldest people there, and roughly 20-30% of the crowd was in some kind of outfit you definitely wouldn't wear on the street.


The con was going to have room for 1500 people, so they sold 1300 pre-reg tickets and saved the remaining 200 for people who showed up at the door. By the time we got there (about 9 AM), the line was backed up a good long way, and shortly thereafter the non-reg line was backed up around the side of the hotel. I'd have given up pretty quickly if I had shown up that day knowing the number of non-prereg tickets available, but maybe some of the fans weren't aware of those numbers. It was clear that this con needs a much larger facility in the future, as they turned away at least a couple of hundred people.


So, we spent nearly two hours standing in line, even though we were preregistered. The good thing about that was that it gave us plenty of time to peruse the people in costume. I fully admit to being clueless as to who most of them were supposed to be, but some of them had obviously put some serious time and money into those outfits, and it was fun to watch people trying to achieve the impossible appearance of animated characters. This was starting to get a little old as the temperature dropped, my feet got tired, and the group of teen girls in line behind us started singing Backstreet Boys songs to amuse themselves.


We reached the dealers' room (my wife's main target) shortly after we got in, where I was delighted to find one of my old game convention friends I haven't seen in quite a while, along with his three daughters and wife. His daughters were all anime fans, and the two older girls were in full regalia. I recognized one of the costumes as being from the movie "Princess Monanoke" and I don't have a clue what the other one was. She had long green hair and a black outfit with gold trim. My old friend and I caught up on old times and exchanged introductions to wives, then my wife and the girls got back down to business exploring the dealers' room.


It was no surprise that roughly a third of the dealers' room was devoted to cosplay outfits, and so was of little interest to my wife. She did find a few things, such as a prop watch from the "Full Metal Alchemist" series, but was disappointed that the art room was relatively small and didn't have anything she wanted.


We couldn't make it to any of the panels because I had Mike H's last session to attend at home, but that wasn't much of a problem because the only panels of interest to my wife were either scheduled for much earlier (before we were able to get in) or much later (we would have been disinclined to stay that late anyway). I was very happy to have run into my old friend Delfino and truly didn't mind people-watching while my wife searched for anime treasure. She was delighted that I came along to keep her company, so it was basically a good day all around.